新加坡总理黄循财：采取强硬措施打击金融犯罪，重点是洗钱、恐怖主义融资

Singapore is fully committed to doing our part. As an international financial and business hub, we recognise that we face greater money laundering and terrorism financing risks. But we are determined to do what is needed to respond to these risks and safeguard Singapore’s reputation as a trusted financial centre.

To this end, we continually review and strengthen our legal frameworks to make them in line with the FATF’s standards.

Over the past few years, we have tightened our regulations to increase transparency on beneficial ownership; introduced new regulations; and strengthened existing laws to address risks related to virtual assets, as well as precious stones and metals dealers. We have also strengthened our laws to give our law enforcement agencies more tools and powers to pursue, prosecute and sanction offenders for money laundering offences.

We have made asset recovery a priority in our national anti-money laundering regime. Later today, Singapore will publish our first ever National Asset Recovery Strategy, which will set out how we will deprive criminals of their illicit funds and assets, remove the financial incentives for criminals to launder their illicit proceeds in Singapore, and return these assets to victims.

Singapore takes a strong approach against financial crime. But zero tolerance does not mean zero occurrence.

Even the most stringent anti-money laundering regimes can be circumvented by determined criminals who will continuously search for gaps to exploit.

It is also important that our measures are not over-zealous and do not unnecessarily stifle legitimate activities and investments.

So we adopt a risk-based approach. We focus on understanding the latest trends and developments in the financial world that can be exploited by criminals, and we develop tools and legal frameworks that will allow us to detect suspicious individuals and activities early.

Our approach has enabled us to take quick and strong enforcement action against criminals who try to use Singapore to launder their illicit funds.

In August last year, our law enforcement agencies conducted one of the largest anti-money laundering operations in the world.

After we picked up signs of illegal activities, we undertook extensive investigations.

And we seized more than S$3 billion in assets from 27 suspects.

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